Member of Parliament for Ningo Prampram, Sam Nartey George, has disputed President Nana Akufo-Addo’s statement that some modifications have been made to substantial elements of the Anti-LGBTQI bill which is currently before the House.
According to him, the Attorney General during their last meeting said he was happy with the position of the bill.
“The president doesn’t know what he is talking about. The bill has not been substantially changed. The bill remains as tough and as rigid as it was. The focus of the bill has not changed, the objective of the bill has not changed
“At the last time, we had a meeting with the Attorney General, the Attorney General is on record to have stated that he’s happy with the position of the bill and that the bill was going to deal with discrimination in our current jurisprudence and expand the frontiers of our legal jurisprudence,” he explained on Accra-based TV3.
He emphasised that the bill remains rigid and tough and there is no intention of making it flexible.
“So clearly the president needs to check his brief on the bill.
“When the bill is laid before the House you’ll realize that the focus of the bill which has to do with voiding marriages, preventing them from adopting children or fostering children, the clampdown on platforms and media houses that are going to do promotion and advocacy or push those materials still remain enforced.”
With the US Vice President in Ghana, he believed that the President should have used the spotlight to send a clear message to the world that Ghana will not legalize homosexuality.
“Well, two things, I thought that President Akufo-Addo would have used this opportunity to send a clear message to the world and to the country that his fidelity is to the Ghanaian people and to the constitution of Ghana and the 1992 constitution that he swore an oath to uphold and would have sent a clear message that Ghana is not going to entertain any expressions of homosexuality.”
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“It was known that this would have been a topic and I expected that he would have shown that he was on top of his brief,” he stated.
While speaking at a joint press briefing with US Vice President, Kamala Harris, President Akufo-Addo explained that the amendments done to the bill were done upon the intervention of the Attorney-General, adding that the final outcome is yet to be determined.
The President dismissed claims that there is already legislation governing the activities of the LGBQI+ fraternity in the country.
He indicated that the Anti-LGBTQI bill has not been passed yet and was confident that Parliament will consider the sensitivity of the human rights aspect.